ast generations. Burdened
with these dreadful secrets, when his vanquished father seeks him to
embrace him for the last time, he shudderingly hints to him of fearful
knowledge, and induces his parent to accompany him into the subterranean
caverns. He then recounts to him the scenes which are passing before his
open vision among the dead. The spirits of those who had been chained,
tortured, oppressed, or victimized by his ancestors appear before him,
complaining of past cruelties. They then form a mystic tribunal to try
their old masters and oppressors; the scenes of the dreadful Day of
Judgment pass before him; the unhappy and loving boy at last recognizes
his own father among the criminals; he is dragged to that fatal bar, he
sees him wring his hands in anguish, he hears his dreadful groans as he
is given over to the fiends for torture--he hears his mother's voice
calling him above, but, unwilling to desert his father in his anguish,
he falls to the earth in a deep and long fainting fit, while the
wretched father hears his own doom pronounced by that dread but unseen
tribunal: '_Because thou hast loved nothing, nor revered aught but
thyself and thine own thoughts, thou art damned to all eternity!_'

It is true this scene is very brief, but, rapid as the lightning's
flash, it lasts long enough to scathe and blast, breaking the darkness
but to show the surrounding horror, to deepen into despair the fearful
gloom. Although of the most severe simplicity, it is sublime and
terrible. It is so concise that our hearts actually long for more,
unwilling to believe in the reality of the doom of that ghostly
tribunal. It repeats the awful lessons of Holy Writ, and our conscience
awakes to our deficiencies, while the marrow freezes in our bones as we
read.

The close of the drama is equally sublime. Because the 'TRUTH' was
neither in the camp of Pancratius nor the castle of the count, IT
appears in the clouds to confound them both.

After Pancratius has conquered all that opposed him--has triumphantly
gloated over his Fourieristic schemes for the _material_ well-being of
the race whom he has robbed of all higher faith--he grows agitated at
the very name of God when it falls from the lips of his confidant,
Leonard: the sound seems to awaken him to a consciousness that he is
standing in a sea of blood, which he has himself shed; he feels that he
has been nothing but an instrument of destruction, that he has done
certain evil for a